New year, new Datasheets - now for Necrons too! We saw Captain Titus and the Wardens of Ultramar on Friday, now it's time for some villains. The robot hordes of the Necrontyr are reinforced with two monstrous additions today - an updated set of rules for the Nightbringer, reflecting their new enormous stature, and the completely new Nekrosor Ammentar, the spookiest skeleton of all. Let's see what they can do.

Nekrosor Ammentar

Credit: Games Workshop

If you ordered a slithering robot horror with a million different abilities, great news, Ammentar is here. The Nekrosor is basically a Destroyer Daemon Prince, packing a moderate defensive profile of T8, 9W, 3+/4+ Invulnerable, and picking up Lone Operative as long as he’s within 3” of another Destroyer unit (which can include a Hexmark if you’re feeling mean). That’s a little squishier than his demonic counterparts, but he makes up for it by being INFANTRY, making him very easy to maneuvre around the board with his 10” movement.

That combines with a very solid offensive profile to make him a great flank bruiser. He has six big swings in melee at S10 AP-4 D3, and will always have Sustained Hits 1 on from his own aura. He also packs some Extra Attacks from his tail and whip coils at S6 AP-1 D1, helpful for if he needs to wade through chaff. His pistols also help with the latter, providing four shots at S6 AP-2 D1 with Ignore Cover and AP-2, either chipping a few wounds off a big threat or scything down T3 Infantry. Helping cement his status as a flank piece, he has Fights First and Deep Strike - against melee Infantry armies, he’s ultra annoying coming in from Rapid Ingress, picking something up, then lurking in a ruin behind hard to charge.

If that’s not what you need from him in a given game, he also provides some really strong buffs. He has a 6” Aura that gives all Destroyer Cult units Sustained Hits 1, and this also applies to all other Necron units when they’re targeting the closest eligible foe. This is just really good pretty much however you want to use him - even in a Starshatter or Awakened build with no other Destroyers you’ll get serious value from it. Not content with that, he has a defensive aura too, providing Necron units within 6” a 5+ Feel No Pain against Psychic Attacks and Mortal Wounds. Sure you can already get this from a Tomb Spider, but you are way more excited to bring this guy along than you are about those. Finally, if you do pack other Destroyers, each time Ammentar destroys a unit, he can give a Destroyer Cult unit within 9” re-roll 1s to Wound until the end of the phase. This will come up as a tiny fringe benefit once in a blue moon.

This guy will absolutely see play - he’s a very easy drop-in for any Awakened Herohammer build, providing yet another powerful, revivable Character, and he’s also great in Starshatter or Canoptek Court, where lots of re-rolls amp up the power of his aura. He’s even quite timely for the metagame we’re in, as the sudden onslaught of Tzeentch Turkeys makes the anti-Psychic aura more relevant than it would have been at pretty much any other time this edition. Great stuff for Necron players.

The Nightbringer

Credit: Games Workshop

The mighty new Nightbringer model comes with a revised Datasheet, tinkering mostly with the statline and defences to match the new look, and trends in how 10th has been designed. The bad news first - half damage is out, replaced by -1D. The good news is everything else, starting with an extra 4W (particularly useful with a 5+ Feel No Pain), and an improvement of the base save to 3+.

This means defensively you’re technically looking at a sidegrade. Right now, I can tell you from repeated experience that the way the Nightbringer dies is that your opponent Grenades, hits you with some charge mortals, then whacks you with a bunch of re-rolled D1 and D2 attacks or you get punked by something with Melta 4. Yes a lot of people I play against play Blood Angels or Knights, why do you ask? For both those cases, the new statline is just better, and some armies that used to be able to just about land a crucial kill won’t any more.

Where it’s worse is situations where you can currently just float about with impunity - 4+ invulnerable into halving damage meant you could be bold even in the face of things like Gladiator Lancers, which will now do you some serious harm (and the model is harder to hide). This is a real factor, but given where the metagame is, I’m still counting this as a narrow net positive unless the cost goes up a lot to account for it. The 3+ base Save is also a minor nice-to-have - it’ll save the odd chip wound that you sometimes lost to embarrassing things, and here the larger model makes Cover easier to come by, reducing the threat from stuff like Custodes shooting, which was randomly really great at clipping wounds off.

The other really big change to the Nightbringer is mobility, and hoo boy this is the good bit. The base movement is improved to 10” rather than 6”, making them massively harder to just ignore, and more than making up for the base being a little harder to move round corners. Deep Strike also now comes built in, which whips - I’ve Strategic Reserved the Nightbringer in plenty of games for an ingress, and being able to do that with Deep Strike is really cool. It also makes them very synergistic with Hypercrypt Legion once more, as they can up/down turn one, or reload for Rapid in the mid-game.

Finally, on the offence the Nightbringer is mostly unchanged, which is fine as they were already a great murder machine. You still get 6 big Devastating Wounds swings or a spicy 14 S8 AP-2 D2 sweep attacks, you still get Mortals to nearby enemies on a 4+ at the end of the Fight Phase, and the one small change is that the Gaze of the Nightbringer has improved to AP-3, increasing the chance of randomly decking someone for a bazillion damage with it.

I am definitely more excited to use the Nightbringer with the new statline - improving the mobility and resilience to chip damage is a massive deal, and helps make them the terror that they should be on the battlefield.

Wrap Up

I (Overlord Wings) am unreasonably excited about both of these Datasheets, and looking forward to unleashing them upon my foes as promptly as possible. We hope you're excited too!

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Tags: Necrons | Review | Warhammer 40k | datasheet | 10th Edition